Maker's Day
by Rinaway
Summary: Several days after the Great Revelation, we find Eric and Pam in a strange new world. Rated for language.


**Maker's Day**

_Several days after the Great Revelation, we find Eric and Pam in a strange new world. (True Blood timeline)  
><em>  
>On the night that vampires around the world announced themselves and came 'out' to humanity, Eric Northman and his progeny Pam were holed up inside an underground shelter on a remote island in Sweden.<p>

Eric watched the news updates on a phone he'd stolen from his last victim. He'd heard about the coming reveal, of course, and the new synthetic blood; but like any vampire who'd attained his great age, he was rather wary of change. It wasn't that he didn't trust humans- at least, not exactly. He just didn't trust their initial emotional outburst.

Hence, he and his dear (pouting, grousing, irritated, spoiled-rotten) progeny were hiding as far from humanity as he could think to go without going too far. He'd made this bunker with his maker when he was still a young vampire, and not much had changed with the ages- a narrow reed cot in the corner, draped with ermine furs, a stack of leather-bound books beside it. There was a battered chess set older than Pam shoved under the cot. She refused to play with him, instead staring down at the little controller in her hand, some fragile, electronic child's plaything. She'd eaten its' owner back in Norway.

"Damn it!" she wailed as it suddenly shut off. "That was my last set of batteries! _Now_ what the fuck am I going to do?"

"There's chess-"

"If you suggest that fucking game one more time, I swear I'll stake myself," she declared dramatically. Eric rolled his eyes and refreshed the news page on the slow little gadget. There were reports of violence against vampires in the Middle East- no surprise there- but Europe seemed to be dealing with the shock fairly well. The Americas, long dominated by vampires in secrecy, had been even more welcoming.

"If you insist on being impossible, we'll leave tomorrow at first dusk. I think we should go to America," he suggested.

"America? As in, apple pie, baseball, hideous flag, hideous fashion…_America_?" she said dubiously.

"They've been taking the news to heart pretty fast, Pam. No one's been killed, and their largest retailer already announced they've got synthetic blood on their shelves in all major cities and are open all night, with guards posted." It was as close to open arms as he ever expected his former species to be.

"I'll never forgive them for disco."  
>"Hush." He gathered her to him, and she softened in his arms. If nothing else, the trip meant new clothes- and new clothes meant hunting, and stalking, and then eating and stealing. That would certainly be more entertaining than this god-forsaken cubby in the middle of nowhere.<p>

-

1 month later

-

It wasn't as fun to be a pickpocket as it was to be a pure vampire- a huntress. It felt kind of shallow and degrading, almost as low as drinking the vile, cold, thin synthetic blood they'd bought with stolen bills the first day they arrived on the continent. At least that's what they'd called it in Pam's era. In Eric's, they probably called it "big place over ocean filled with strange brown woman."

She said as much to him when they disembarked from the cargo ship under cover of darkness. He snorted.

"We spoke old Swedish, not like cave men. And that was a little after my time. We were still busy plundering your fair British Isles when I was alive. Maybe I bedded a few of your ancestors."

"A charming thought."

"I was a charming rogue."

She flipped the wallet open and scowled at the thin contents- a couple of singles, a twenty, and some rattling little coins. There were a few of the stiff plastic cards, but when she'd used one from the last wallet she'd stolen to buy some nail polish, the cashier had asked her for ID and she'd had to glamour the girl into letting her sign the little slip of paper without it. And she was sure the man behind her had caught her doing it.

She pocketed the cash and tossed the wallet over her shoulder as she rocketed through the drunken club. They were all young, very full of blood, very stupid, and very drunk. A year ago she would have picked three of them and made them a week's meal, split with her Maker. Now Pam was reduced to stealing their valuables. _How_ the mighty had fallen.

Eric was lounging with a few of the stupidest ones who hadn't realized he was a vampire. He made a very convincing human in the low light, with three of his limbs akimbo and draped across the women's shoulders and laps. One of them was petting his hair in long, smooth strokes. He chattered away as they tittered at his suggestions and come-ons. Only Pam had eyes quick enough to catch his nimble fingers rifling through their purses collected on the floor and slipping cash into his suit sleeves.

He caught her gaze and gave her a tiny nod, the slight signal that a hundred year bond could recognize. He untangled himself and met her in the alley outside.

"What's your take?"

"Eight hundred. Yours?"

"Son of a bitch. I only got three-seventy."

"You aren't as charming, especially with that mouth, young lady." He leaned forward and kissed her softly.

She scoffed in return. "I don't need to be charming. I need to be faster."

"What we need, dear heart, is a club like this." He gestured to the throbbing dance hall. "A place to take their money that much more productively, and even legally. Humans are fascinated by vampires. We'd make a killing without even killing them."

"It sounds boring."

"Boring, but profitable. We could get a house, some pets- you could have a real closet, actually buy clothes…a few entertaining young women…"

It actually sounded tempting, after an undead life on the road, never taking more than they needed, killing those who knew their secrets, with only what they robbed and poached to show for it. Pam imagined several shelves full of very expensive shoes.

"On one condition."

"And what would that be?"

"I get to name the club. And pick the house."

"Whatever you want, on both terms."

She grinned wickedly. "I want a Victorian mansion- and we'll call it Fangtasia." They'd watched Fantasia together at the home of one of their victims shortly after it had come out. Vampires loved movies, because they let them see the sun and daylight after sometimes eons of darkness. The only problem was that they had infinite time and a limited supply of films, though lately that had been changing.

"Fang-_tasia_?" he said skeptically. "Puns aren't in fashion anymore. Humans are mostly too stupid to understand them."

"We'll understand it. The breathers won't get past the word 'Fang,'" Pam advised sagely.

"Fine. But if it goes belly-up in a year…you'll owe me."

"I already owe you everything."

"You'll owe me more than everything."

Her eyes rolled again. As if that were even possible.

-

Pam waved the flyer in his face as he got off his newly acquired 'cellular phone' with the building manager of a local strip mall off Industrial Drive in Shreveport. Eric had won a position as Sheriff of the 5th Area of Louisiana, and Shreveport seemed the most logical place to govern from.

He frowned as he punched the button on the little device too quickly and broke the plastic of the case. And then he cursed under his breath. Procuring money had quickly become the bane of his undead existence, since glamouring it out of humans was now a punishable offense with the Authority, as was their murder. Through off-track betting, he'd managed to turn a thousand dollars into a hundred thousand, and additional financial backing from the Queen, Sophie-Anne, had given them enough to open Fangtasia the following week. He'd sent Pam out to scout for wait staff and some décor for the bar, and she'd returned with what was evidently some sort of advertisement.

"The Shreveport Mall is having a special vampire night! Eric, we should go and you can pick up some new waitresses with me. They never want to talk to me. And there's a coupon…"

Eric groaned. Coupons meant a small savings, but Pam was sure to exhaust her bank account by the dawn anyway. She'd decided the club's opening meant she needed a whole new look, and for some reason that 'look' involved a lot of very expensive black leather. Still, she had a point. He willingly followed her the following night into the glassy façade of the mall.

Awful piped-in music droned as they joined a small throng of vampires who milled around the mall in pairs or small groups while humans- some of them looking petrified, others intrigued- stood ready to serve them in booths or shops. The remaining human patrons gathered their possessions and fled as Eric passed a lingerie store, Pam looking a little too longingly at the long-legged model plastered on their window.

A plain-looking bottle blonde in a strange white uniform stepped in their path and boldly held out a bizarre little triangle of paper with a rounded ball of red ice balanced in its center. "Would you like a True-Blood snow cone, m'am and sir?" she chirped in a friendly manner.  
>Eric looked long at the creature, who seemed clearly unafraid of the vampires around her, even the ones looking directly at her jugular and little else. He recognized one of them as Bill Compton, dressed in a frumpy rough-hewn shirt and some tattered jeans and looking for all the world as though he'd crawled out of a crypt. That creepy little bastard probably had. Pam accepted the woman's proffered 'Snow Cone' and licked it as he turned his attention back to its source.<p>

"What is your name?"

"It's uh, Ginger, sir." The little blonde gulped and adjusted her hat before busying herself with the ice chest hanging around her neck.

"Ginger, would you like a source of employment more lucrative than peddling frozen blood-mush to base creatures?"

"Are you offerin' me a job?"

-

Fangtasia was set to open at 10pm, so Pam and Eric rose early. He woke up to a little piece of cardboard propped up on his clothes. It had a picture of Dracula smiling and said "Hey, Maker!" in weird lettering across one face of it. It was folded; when he opened it, Pam's neat cursive greeted him under a pre-printed message that said "Happy first annual Maker's Day!" She'd signed it with her name and a heart.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked as she joined him, clad from the neck down in very tight black nylon that might as well have been painted on her curvy body.

"Oh, it was at that card shop at the mall the other night. The big greeting company, Markedhall or whatever, declared today the first vampire only holiday. Maker's Day. I'm supposed to shower you with love and affection for being such a great Maker."

"Instead, you present me with a little piece of paper. How kind."

"It's the thought that counts. I know you Vikings didn't believe in literacy- or paper…" Eric's jaw twitched. "But know this: next week is Progeny Day. I expect something nice."

"How about that little bloodbag? Ginger?"

"Already had her twice. Try harder."

"Maybe I'll just get you a card."

-FIN- 


End file.
